Climate and Southern Africa's Water-Energy-Food Nexus

By Declan Conway, Emma Archer van Garderen, Delphine Deryng, Steve Dorling, Tobias Krueger, Willem Landman, Bruce Lankford, Karen Lebek, Tim Osborn, Claudia Ringler, James Thurlow, Tingju Zhu and Carole Dalin. In southern Africa, the connections between climate and the water–energy–food nexus are strong. Physical and socioeconomic exposure to climate is high in many areas and in crucial economic sectors. Spatial interdependence is also high, driven, for example, by the regional extent of many climate anomalies and river basins and aquifers that span national boundaries. There is now strong evidence of the effects of individual climate anomalies, but associations between national rainfall and gross domestic product and crop production remain relatively weak.

The majority of climate models project decreases in annual precipitation for southern Africa, typically by as much as 20% by the 2080s. Impact models suggest these changes would propagate into reduced water availability and crop yields. Recognition of spatial and sectoral interdependencies should inform policies, institutions and investments for enhancing water, energy and food security. Three key political and economic instruments could be strengthened for this purpose: the Southern African Development Community, the Southern African Power Pool and trade of agricultural products amounting to significant transfers of embedded water.

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Nexus Modelling // Towards Ranking the Water–Energy–Food–Land Use–Climate Nexus Interlinkages for Building a Nexus Conceptual Model with a Heuristic Algorithm

By Chrysi S. Laspidou, Nikolaos Mellios and Dimitris Kofinas. In this article, a practical heuristic approach for gaining a systemic and contextual perspective on nexus component interlinkages is presented, by building on a simple three-point typology of interactions. The approach is simple and can be applied in any case study a nexus analysis is pursued, regardless of data availability.

By Luca Ferrini (Project Manager, Nexus Regional Dialogue Programme Niger Basin) and Lucia Benavides. This article provides a comparative analysis about the level of integration of different sectors within the mission statements of three River Basin Organisations in the Sahel: the Senegal River Basin Development Authority (OMVS by its French acronym), the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) and the Niger Basin Authority (NBA). It further stresses different focus areas of the mission statements,...

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